Jamie
Det. Joe Bomowski is on edge when his overbearing mother comes to town. When his mom witnesses a murder and he’s faced with hosting her until the case can be solved he takes matters into his own hands. Can he solve the case and get rid of his mom (and perhaps find love) before it’s too late? Find out in… Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.
How?! It’s just not Joe’s week. First he gets in a wild shootout during a sting operation, then his girlfriend/boss (you read that right) breaks up with him because he’s an immature man-child, and then his overbearing mom comes the visit. Gah! Women! Am I right? Anyway, after his mom ruins his gun in a failed attempt to clean it she heads off to the bad part of town to buy him a new one. Unable to get a gun due to a waiting period she heads around the corner to buy some heavy duty illegal firearms out of the back of a van. Illegal transaction being what they are she finds herself in the middle of a shootout and subsequent murder investigation. Wanting to get her son a leg up for a promotion, she decides to withhold information (Probably ain’t going to work given that he’s been carrying on an inappropriate relationship with his immediate superior… oh, and he’s a bad cop). As a result she kinda forces him to team up with her and they start to uncover a (not so) intricate insurance fraud conspiracy. You see a company had all these (illegal?) guns. Wanting to double dip they faked a warehouse fire, collected the insurance, and then were going to turn around and sell them on the black market. Joe figures all this out with the help of his mom and even while navigating his personal relationships, growing a little as a person, and learning to live and love again, he is able to track the bad guys down. They attempt to escape to South America, but are confronted by Joe’s mom. Taking her with them (but, why?) Joe is forced to make a daring rescue, while his trigger-happy mom saves the day with the help of her gun. In the end Joe gets engaged and his mom heads home as her work there is done… you know until they start having babies and she has to come back for the sequel Stop! Or My Grandma Will Shoot. THE END.
Why?! Love. Obviously. The love of a mother for her child, the love of a bachelor for his independence, and the love of money for an anonymously eeevil business person. The funniest thing to dive into is the business person, just because they seemed to be so lazy with that part of the plot. He’s a business person who had an insurance claim on a shipment of guns and weapons. Being geniuses they decide to double dip and burn down the warehouse so they can turn around and sell the weapons on the black market. Unfortunately for them some of the people involved steal some of the guns and sell them on the street, where they are discovered and immediately traced. After that everything goes to shit. I am 100% certain this is also the plot of a Michael Dudikoff film. It just has to be. It’s so vague.
Who?! Some early(ish) roles for some actors that became well known, most notably Ving Rhames who has a very minor speaking role as “Mr. Stereo,” for real. Most important though is that I love when animals get credits. A lot of films will not actually give a credit for animals, even when they are pretty prominent parts of the action. Here though they have a credit for Pixie, who played Estelle Getty’s little Yorkie. Only credit Pixie got.
What?! There are a number of product placements in this film but I think Cocoa Puffs is the best one. He’s forced to eat it as part of a large breakfast prepared by his mother. This of course gives him an upset stomach. Why did I like this one the best? Well after discussion with Patrick he pointed out that normally Stallone writes into all his films that his character is a health nut, which allows his to provide sage dietary advice to all his coworkers and potential love interests. Since he didn’t write this film, he is eating Cocoa Puffs. Must have killed him inside.
Where?! This is a pretty good LA film as it plays into the plot a little bit. Like Stallone grew up in New Jersey with his mother and when he got old enough he escaped, moved as far away from her as he could, and become a police officer. Where is far away from New Jersey? LA of course. That’s more backstory, though, and not much in the actual film. A-.
When?! Second film in a row where it takes place in large part in a police station and yet I couldn’t for the life of me determine anything close to an exact date. I’m really pretty sure that for all these films there is a way to find this stuff out, but perhaps I would need to start getting in contact with propmasters and writers on the films. Yeah that’s what I’ll do. I’ll become a crazy person. Perfect. F.
This is probably one of the worst written films we’ve watched. It’s almost like one of those bikini car wash films or something. Everything is two-dimensional and the premise of the film has to keep on getting reset in order to get to feature length. One moment you’ll see Stallone realizing that his mom isn’t that bad and maybe she is just trying to help and the next he’s screaming “She’s going to kill me!” Just over and over and over. The interesting thing is that I thought Estelle Getty was actually kinda fun and charming as the overbearing mom. Stallone was really overreacting… she just seemed like a regular mom (with some characteristics ratcheted up slightly for laughs). Apparently this was one of Ebert’s critiques even as he noted that they seemed scared to make her an actual nightmare, but instead landed on a fairly likable character. The biggest problem I had with the film was Stallone’s love interest who is supposed to be his boss but is written like a two-dimensional, marriage-obsessed, needy stereotype. It’s insulting. She’s a lieutenant in the LAPD! You couldn’t make her even a slightly strong character? Instead she spends the movie wringing her hands over whether this dope is going to stop being a dope and love her? Terrible. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Stallone looked over at Schwarzenegger’s Kindergarten Cop and was “I’ll have what he’s having, but way worse and nobody will like it.” Well, Hollywood can dish that out in spades. Let’s go!
P’s View on the Preview – I needed something, anything, that suggested this was something other that a cynically made one-note comedy. ANYTHING. Because if it was what the trailer suggested, then there was never any hope for this. And without hope … what is BMT really? Where would we really be if we just walked directly into a film that offered no laughs and no entertainment. WHERE?!
The Good – The movie is yet another film that you can kind of call quaint. The further you get from the cash-grab cynicism it was obviously made with, the more it just kind of seems like a weird cop-based sitcom from the 60s. This hard-boiled LAPD detective has a new roommate … his mother! And boy are they an odd couple! I liked Getty, who played the mother. Stallone was mildly amusing. I can at least see why people are giving it better reviews as time goes on, it was far far less aggravating than I expected. I think that is a testament to Estelle Getty, she’s such a cute little old lady!
The Bad – The film is trash and should never have been made. “Hard pass” should have been the only two words the screenwriter heard from the instant the mere concept was put forward. It is sad it was made. It was also not funny (despite claiming to be a comedy). And the B-story was a complete nothing. Some jabroni wanted to commit some light fraud by burning down a warehouse full a guns, yada yada yada, he killed like a dozen people and tries to flee to Mexico. Like … okay? And the love life storyline is tacked on … and no one looks very good after that one. The detectives are harassing their female superior officer, and Stallone’s boss/girlfriend’s actions towards her subordinate in Stallone is wildly inappropriate. Of all of the cop-plus-something movies, I would guess this is the worst one … but that isn’t a surprise when your formula is cop-plus-his-mother. Wait … I forgot about the cop-plus-a-literal-dinosaur film we saw a few years ago …
The BMT – Somehow cop-plus-something films are a sub-genre. A ridiculously specific sub-genre, but a bad movie sub-genre nonetheless. And I think it is just ridiculous enough to either be brought up again on its own as just a dumb 90s comedy, or as a combo with Theodore Rex, the aforementioned cop-plus-a-literal-dinosaur film. It really is a great sub-genre, and we should find a time to fit in one of the many cop-plus-a-dog films that obviously qualify for BMT.
Roast-radamus – I think this qualifies for a Setting as a Character (Where?) for LA, it plays a huge part. There is kind of a new category here for Evil Laurel & Hardy (Who?) for the skinny and fat guy comedic combo bad guys who are always joshing each other and sneezing and stuff … legit, weirdly an amazing thing in film now that I think about it. That is probably it though, unfortunately they decided against having the mother ultimately be the bad guy in what would have certainly been the worst twist ever. Sigh, what could have been.
StreetCreditReport.com – Weirdly most of the 1992 lists for some reason ignored this. Luckily Roger Ebert was all over this as the time. “`Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot’ is one of those movies so dimwitted, so utterly lacking in even the smallest morsel of redeeming value, that you stare at the screen in stunned disbelief.” … so I take it you didn’t like it Roger?
You Just Got Schooled – On the DVD for the film there is a short 5 minute documentary (advertisement really, although I’m not sure where it would be shown … these days it would be one of the earlier commercials that play in a theater before the trailers) operating as a making of clip. It was interesting. Nothing much more than what the trailer gives you, except you can see Sly just razzing Getty the entire time. It is pretty impressive. He’s telling off color jokes (like how they just unfroze her because he needed some ice cubes for a drink … get it, she’s old) and Getty clearly is just loving it. There are like 30 parts where he’ll say something a little inappropriate and then she’ll laugh and give him a little punch. You can really see the charisma of Sly at the time, and also a bit of how smart he probably actually is, he was really coming at her quick with one-liners. I wish there were more of these things for the bad movies we watch, it makes me appreciate even more the genuine dynamic Getty and Sly had in the film.
And that’s it. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 